


All that is Large and All that is Slight

by RadioFriday



Series: Talonverse [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Bruce Wayne is Bad at Feelings, Bruce Wayne is Trying, Damian Wayne Gets a Hug, Damian Wayne Needs a Hug, Damian Wayne is Bad at Feelings, Damian Wayne-centric, Dick Grayson is Damian Wayne’s Parent, Dick Grayson is Dead, Dick Grayson is a Ray of Sunshine, Everyone Needs Therapy, Everything Hurts, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurts So Good, also there are hugs, but not really, everyone is trying, just kidding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27619414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadioFriday/pseuds/RadioFriday
Summary: Damian knows that the rest of the family doesn't think he is coping.Damian knows that they are right.
Relationships: Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Series: Talonverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015761
Comments: 24
Kudos: 310





	All that is Large and All that is Slight

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "Ahhh...Men" by Say Anything, which is a very Talonverse tune if you're up for it.
> 
> I was working on a Jason-centric installment, but then Damian just sort of punched his way into my brain. He's persistent like that. 
> 
> This is probably more of a timestamp for this 'verse than anything. Dick has been gone for a few months and the family is not yet aware that anything is amiss. They are going through the motions of a family that has experienced a great loss and Damian, in particular, is struggling.

Rooms in the Manor have a way of becoming tombs. 

Bruce’s great aunt, Florence, died at the age of 12 during the 1918 pandemic-- the family so distraught that her rooms were sealed off completely, with plaster and wood, only to be rediscovered when part of the floor collapsed during the Great Gotham Earthquake decades later.

Thomas and Martha’s suite has, of course, been largely untouched since the morning Alfred entered to find suitable burial garb. Bruce lingered in the doorway and when Alfred emerged from Martha’s closet with a green dress draped over his arm, Bruce quietly said “There is a blue Dior suit I think she would prefer.” 

Jason’s room was largely verboten when he was dead and despite his return, is still a relic of the Before Time. To Damian’s knowledge, Jason has never set foot in his bedroom since his resurrection, and has only ever acquiesced to sleeping for a few hours on a sofa in one of the sitting rooms, or in the study, and only then if Alfred insists and furthermore only if Alfred also promises there will be strawberry waffles in the morning. 

Damian supposes his own room was closed up when he was dead too, but he doesn’t dwell on it. He was dead and then he got better. It’s a fine room on a corner of the third floor of the Manor. On a clear day, he can just make out the ocean and the bluffs way, way out on the furthest edge of the Wayne property line. It is smaller than Drake or Grayson’s rooms, but it gets excellent light, and there is a barely used sitting area outside his door that ostensibly belongs to everyone, but Damian has claimed as his own, with plush pet beds for Titus-the-Dog and Alfred-the-Cat, various easels, and a large television with which to play the latest DLC for Cheese Viking. 

Father has continued to pay the rent on Grayson’s apartment in Bludhaven. Drake and Todd alternate as pretenders to the Nightwing mantle, lest anyone connect Dick Grayson’s sudden death with Nightwing’s sudden disappearance. They use it as a sort of base when in Bludhaven, but anything of personal significance has been removed. Much of it has found its way back to the Manor-- the circus posters, the snapshots, Zitka. Much of Dick’s Nightwing ephemera is downstairs-- Drake too thin and lanky, Todd too tall and broad-- to wear the proper uniform. 

Damian finds their alterations distasteful and vulgar. 

“Nightwing does not wear such crude armor,” Damian scoffed, “It is unbecoming.” 

To say nothing of Drake’s insistence on adding a  _ cape _ . 

“Well, short round,” Jason drawled, “Dick got away with wearing what was basically a leotard because he was a freak who moved too fast for anything to touch him. I don’t have that luxury. I am not Dick.” 

“Then you are not Nightwing.”

Damian felt slightly vindicated when neither Drake, Todd, nor Father tried to argue any different as he stormed off.

Damian knows that they think he is losing it; that he isn’t “coping” and Damian doesn’t know what to do to make them think differently, doesn’t know if he even wants them to think differently. Perhaps he is not fine, and that in itself is fine, because it is not fine that the only person that Damian knows for a fact loved him is no longer here. It wasn’t even a glorious death in the heat of battle, something  _ worthy _ of Grayson. It was a stupid, pointless death that accomplished nothing but making everyone sad and intolerable, draining the color and warmth from Damian’s world. 

The only color Damian can find is in Grayson’s old room, with the heavy blue drapes and the memory foam mattress and the little pillows Grayson would position beneath a knee or his hips to alleviate the chronic aches that came from a lifetime of battle. It still smells of him, though it was rarely used by him more than a few times a month-- and that scent, that warmth-- it is beginning to fade. Damian feels like he is losing Grayson all over again.

“Is there a way to stop it?” Damian asked, once, maybe a month after Grayson’s funeral, when Pennyworth brought him a tray with a sandwich he had no intention of eating. 

“Stop what, Master Damian?” Pennyworth looked appropriately perplexed. 

“The smell. I come here…” Damian wanted to explain that he went there because he could close his eyes and imagine Grayson was still there, but as such, it was the sort of thing he would have told Grayson-- and only Grayson-- because he knew for certain that Grayson would not have scoffed, or thought it a weak or childish sentiment, even though Damian knew that both of those things were true and he certainly deserved any mockery related to such a ridiculous habit.

Grayson would not have loved him any less. 

“My dear boy.” Pennyworth sat on the bed beside him, but held his old hands awkwardly between his knees. He made no move to touch or hug Damian. The person whose job it was to touch and hug Damian is dead. 

Damian thought he heard his own heart crack in the hushed silence. He turned away from Pennyworth and buried his face in Grayson’s pillows, “Leave,” he said, hoping he sounded commanding and formidable instead of 12-years-old and sad.

“Master Damian--” 

“LEAVE!” 

When the door clicked shut and Damian was certain that Pennyworth had retreated down the hall, Damian slid across the bed and slipped into Grayson’s closet. It was mostly empty of clothes since Grayson had stopped living at the Manor full-time: faded school uniforms, old suits, several impossibly small circus costumes sealed in protective garment bags-- the one furthest in the back, Damian found, had bloodstains on the knees. 

Damian located a sweatshirt he recalled Grayson wearing recently. He pulled it over his own head and breathed deeply. He crawled back into bed, greedily soaking up any trace of Grayson while it was still there.

It is almost gone when Father opens the door one evening. He does not knock or ask if he can come in. He simply  _ does _ and Damian feels that in another life he would have cared, but instead he burrows deeper into one of Grayson’s sweatshirts and resumes gazing out the window. Grayson’s room is a floor below Damian’s and it is not located in a corner, though it features tall windows on both sides of the bed with built-in window seats. It overlooks one of the gardens and a row of dogwood trees planted by some long-dead Wayne ancestor that Grayson said he used to shimmy down to sneak out after curfew. 

Damian is watching thick, wet, February snow pile on the bare branches. He has been watching it for most of the evening. 

“Should you not be preparing to go out?” Damian asks, without looking away. 

Father says nothing. He closes the door behind him and spares a concerned look at Damian’s untouched dinner. He settles at the foot of the bed in a way that seems far too delicate for a man of his formidable size. 

“I see,” Damian sighs, “You have come to tell me that I must stop this behavior. That it is not healthy and that I am being a child.” 

“No, I haven’t. Though I  _ am _ concerned because it’s  _ not _ healthy.”

“T-t.”

Father sighs, “I know that the last few months have been hard for you--”

“Please do not patronize me.” 

Father says nothing and for a moment, Damian thinks he may get up and leave. 

Once, Todd had joined Damian and Grayson on patrol, a few months after Father came back and Grayson was testing the waters of Nightwing again. They had mostly bickered for hours while Grayson played referee and at the end of the night, a visibly exhausted Grayson swore that he would never patrol with both of them together ever again. 

At one point, Todd had told Damian that if he was nervous about being Father’s Robin, he just had to remember that “Batman is a badass. Bruce Wayne is a pussy.” 

“What he means,” Grayson had said, diplomatically, after Damian threatened to disembowel Todd for his insolence, “Is that Batman is Batman and does Batman things and Bruce Wayne is...not.”

“That makes absolutely no sense. What does that mean?”

Grayson clapped him on the shoulder and somersaulted off the ledge they were perched on with a laugh, “You’ll figure it out, little bird.” 

Father shifts awkwardly and it is a very un-Batman-like move. 

“Out with it,” Damian snaps, half expecting to be told that he was going to be forced to go to therapy, or sent back to Mother, or that Father had found a new Robin since Damian has not been able to bring himself to go out more than a handful of times in the last few months. Perhaps Drake is taking the name back, and then Todd will be the false Nightwing full-time, and there will be no need for Damian anymore, and he can simply lay here until he turns to dust.

In the back of Damian's mind, Grayson rolls his eyes and huffs, “So  _ dramatic _ , Dames.” 

Instead, Father says, “I’ve been going over Dick’s papers.” 

“Is that so?”

“Yes.” 

Damian forces a bitter laugh and hopes he sounds haughty and terrible, because then maybe Father, and the others, will be convinced that he is fine, and they will leave him alone and he can try to disappear, to follow Grayson’s ghost into nothing-- perhaps even quicker without their meddling. 

“I suppose he left everything to the founding of a clown school, or something equally ridiculous?” Damian’s voice cracks at the end, but he catches it, puffs his chest out, even though Father probably can’t tell beneath the blankets and the sweatshirt and the pillows. 

Father’s lips twitch, “There were charitable contributions made to entities relevant to Dick’s interests.” 

“A grant to archive the world’s largest collection of horrible puns.” 

“No.”

“An animal shelter for circus elephants.” 

Father’s mouth twitches again, “Yes, actually.” 

Damian’s chest hurts. He wants to say something catty and hurtful, but he can’t get it out-- the words dying on his tongue, leaving only ashes behind for him to choke on.

Father looks intensely uncomfortable. Damian sits up and rests his chin on his knees. Father takes him in-- the oversized sweatshirt, the hair in need of a trim. Damian supposes he is surely a pathetic sight. 

“He also left a trust. For you.” Father holds out an envelope-- the heavy legal kind. Damian accepts it and runs his fingers over the smooth ecru paper before carefully unfolding the small packet inside. He reads quickly and as his face screws and twists, Damian tries to make it look disgusted. He thrusts the papers back towards his father. 

“A pittance. Surely Grayson realized that between the al Ghul and the Wayne fortunes I am more than provided for.” Let him see a spoiled, entitled, brat. Let him see someone who is not worthy of their fretting and hovering. Let him see someone who should be left alone. 

“I don’t believe that was his intent, Damian. Did you read the stipulations?” 

“Yes, and Grayson must have been  _ daft _ to think that I would ever travel for  _ fun _ . For  _ no reason whatsoever. _ To ‘go skydiving just for the thrill.’ I mean  _ really _ . T-t!”

“Did you read  _ all _ of it?”

“Yes, I read all of it and I do not want him to be ‘with me in spirit’ I want him to be here with me now!” 

Father ignores the outburst and continues, “He also wrote that he thought you should have your own funds that are free from any of the Wayne or al Ghul families and their associated...obligations. Something that is yours alone. Once you turn 18--”   
  


“I DO NOT WANT HIS MONEY. Give it to the elephants.” 

Father carefully takes the discarded papers and tucks them into a pocket near his heart, “If that is truly how you feel, then speak to Alfred. He is the trustee until you are of age.”

Damian tilts his head to the side, “Why are you not the trustee? You are my guardian.” 

Father shrugs, “I’m sure Dick had his reasons.” 

“Grayson always spoke very highly of you.” 

Father gives Damian a fond look, not unlike a look that may have crossed Grayson’s face from time to time, “No, he didn’t.” 

Damian grimaces, “No. Perhaps not always,” he forces himself to look his father in the eye, “But often.” 

Father smiles, hesitantly, like he isn’t certain if he is doing it correctly. He reaches for Damian then stops short. No one else touches Damian. Only Grayson dared. Only Grayson had been brave enough. 

Only Grayson had been brave enough to love Damian. 

Damian blinks furiously at the heat pooling in his eyes, overflowing to scald his cheeks. He shakes his head when Father moves to hold him, but doesn’t pull away. He’s just so tired. He’s just so  _ tired _ . 

It takes Damian a moment to realize that he is shaking and Father is rubbing circles into his back, between his shoulder blades, murmuring into his hair, “It’s okay. It’s alright. I miss him too.” 

Damian pulls away and wipes at his face with the cuffs of Grayson’s sweatshirt, “It’s not...of course I miss him. I just...there are other people who love  _ you _ , Father. But now I am truly alone and without purpose and it is...I do not care for it.”

Father looks stricken. Father looks perhaps more devastated than Damian has seen him since that terrible call from Bludhaven. He looks like a fish gaping in the open air for a moment and Damian can hear Grayson laughing at the very un-Batman-like face in the back of his mind. 

“You don’t think you are loved.” 

“T-t. Of course not. I am quite unloveable and I am quite aware of that. Grayson persisted because Grayson is...was...an idiot.” Damian’s face screws up again, “But he was  _ my _ idiot.” 

“Damian.”

“I apologize, Father. I shall...I don’t know. Would you prefer that I leave?” 

“No.” 

“I do not feel that I belong here now. Anymore.” 

Father pinches the bridge of his nose. Damian recalls Grayson making a similar gesture when he was exasperated. Or when he was trying to gather his thoughts. Or when he was tired. More often than not, it was all three simultaneously and usually Damian or Father’s fault. Damian wonders if Grayson picked the move up from Father. Then, Damian’s father looks at him with the sort of raw emotion that Damian knows only came from Grayson’s influence.

“I’m sorry, Damian. I am sorry that you came to believe that. I feel that we didn’t do enough to make you feel otherwise.”

“Grayson--”

“Dick loved openly. I think Dick gave his love more freely than any of us. Because he..I don’t know. Because he believed in it. Clark,” Father smiles, “Clark used to say that was Dick’s superpower.” 

“I do not understand.”

“I can’t melt steel beams with my eyes, Damian. And I can’t fly or breathe in outer space. And I don’t have Dick’s...I’m not Dick. But I will try to be what you need, Damian. I’ll try and I won’t always get it right, but please understand that that doesn’t mean you are not loved. By myself. By Alfred. By your brothers. Do you think you could also try? Try to let us love you?” 

Damian takes a deep breath of the air that only barely still carries Grayson’s presence, but he can feel Grayson prodding him, grinning, “C’mon, little bird. Hug it out.” 

“I will not hug it out.” Damian states, but he doesn’t pull away when Father leans towards him again and wraps his arms around him. Father does not smell anything like Grayson. He does not feel anything like Grayson-- too wide and tense-- and he does not touch like Grayson, who had no concept of personal space whatsoever. This is hard for his father, but his father has decided to be brave, and Damian feels like a balm has been placed on his cracked and broken heart. 

It still hurts. 

But right now, it hurts less. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I think this might make Bruce's actions regarding Damian and Dick in "Limbo" a little more understandable. I'm not saying they're right. I'm just saying that Bruce is trying and also Bruce is kind of a fuck-up.


End file.
